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About Cannon Beach gazette. (Cannon Beach, Or.) 1977-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 17, 2017)
November 17, 2017 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com • 3A Meet Al Aya, the man behind the ‘moo’ Thirty years of tsunami preparedness in Cannon Beach By Brenna Visser Cannon Beach Gazette There was a time when the man behind Cannon Beach’s iconic “mooing” sirens was skeptical about the need for a tsunami warning system. The system that alerts res- idents of an impending tsuna- mi threat is about to turn 30 years old. But in 1985, wheth- er those sirens should exist was up for debate at a Can- non Beach Fire District board meeting. Al Aya had just retired and moved to Cannon Beach, where an old high school friend convinced him to apply for an opening on the board. At his first meeting, he vot- ed to redirect funding for the sirens to more “immediately pressing needs.” “It’d been 21 years since the last tsunami in 1964, and at the time it seemed like a waste of money to invest in alarms when these events were so rare,” Aya said. But Aya remembers walk- ing down the beach two days after the vote and watching a group of children building a sandcastle at the edge of the surf. With no adults watching them, he wondered how these kids would know about a tsu- nami warning and how to get to safety. “All of this caused me to worry whether we’d done the right thing,” Aya said. So Aya did research and discovered the threat of a tsu- nami hitting the Pacific North- west was much more likely than he assumed. Before he knew it, he was in charge of establishing the town’s tsuna- mi alarm system. Making the “moo” Before moving to Cannon Beach, Aya worked as a stat- istician for a phone company, gathering data about customer service. COLIN MURPHEY/EO MEDIA GROUP Al Aya looks over equipment in a room on Monday at the Cannon Beach Fire-Rescue Main Station that controls the tsu- nami warning system. “I’ve always been pretty mechanical, but no, I suppose I didn’t have experience with this type of stuff before,” Aya said. To figure out what equip- ment was needed, Aya reached out to nuclear power plants, which for years had relied on sirens to warn surrounding communities in case of a ra- dioactive accident. At $30,000 a pop, the fire district began installing the 40-foot tall si- rens strategically around Can- non Beach and Arch Cape. But issues started to arise when it came time to test the sirens. Aya worried about how the public would react after hearing the loud alarms over and over for multiple days. He was concerned the town’s irri- tation could politically hinder the project. “I was emailing with an author friend of mine, who is an arch-conservative guy, about the problem. As a joke, I thought because the acronym for our system was COWS —– and restaurants, where they learn that the testing is to warn of an impending tsunami.” Cannon Beach’s system was one of the first of its kind by 1988, and places like the Hanford Nuclear Reserva- tion, Depoe Bay and Port Al- berni, British Columbia, all modeled similar community warning systems after Can- non Beach. “They don’t moo, though,” Aya said. ERICK BENGEL/EO MEDIA GROUP A siren tower sits near the intersection of Washington Street and Ocean Avenue in Cannon Beach. for Community Warning Sys- tem — that maybe we could broadcast a mooing sound,” Aya said. “He thought it was hilarious, and I figured if some- one serious like him thought mooing was funny, maybe less serious people would, too.” Thirty years later, it’s Aya’s voice people hear over the loud- speaker letting them know “it’s just a test,” and the prerecorded “mooing” sound he found in a BBC sound effects library. ‘Now far safer’ Aya is no longer involved with maintaining the warning system. But over the decades he served on the fire district’s board, the changes he wit- nessed in tsunami and earth- quake safety technology have been substantial. What has made the largest difference has been improved seismic detection systems. In the mid-1980s, it was board While part of the value is definitely for comedic effect, Aya said, having an unusual sound also serves as a built-in education tool. “When the monthly COWS test is run, residents take it in stride but often are amused by how startled some visitors are over the loud mooing,” Aya said. “So they inquire in shops policy to evacuate local hazard areas if any kind of ground disturbance was felt. According to Aya’s records, evacuations of this kind have happened four times since 1989. Today, the National Tsu- nami Warning Center can alert communities within a few minutes of a dangerous oceanic event. The data is de- tailed enough to inform com- munities if a tsunami is on its way. But when Aya first start- ed, it could have taken up to 45 minutes to get an advisory faxed, which is an issue when on average it only takes about 20 minutes after an earthquake for a tsunami to arrive. Since Aya’s tenure, board member Garry Smith said the fire district has updated sirens to use digital technology, and is looking to install two more COWS by Hug Point and Arcadia Beach when funds allow. But much of how the system runs today is thanks to Aya’s work. “If it hadn’t been for Al, we wouldn’t have this system,” Smith said. “Before this, we had to evacuate the old-fash- ioned way, driving the town warning people. This is much safer.” Typically, warning systems are managed by county gov- ernments rather than local fire districts, Smith said. But Can- non Beach fights to keep the system they built on their own. “If we have a major event, and we directly get a noti- fication from the National Weather Service, we want to get out the message as fast as possible,” Smith said. “Some- times the county waits longer to make a decision than we would.” Ultimately, Aya said, tsu- nami preparedness is built household by household through education and plan- ning, no matter how many si- rens are “mooing.” “But overall,” Aya said, “I would say people on the coast are now far safer than they were three decades ago.” Active Members of All brokers listed with firm are licensed in the state of Oregon What is RMLS? As the Northwest’s largest REALTOR®-owned Multiple Listing Service(MLS), RMLS serves approximately 10,000 Real Estate Professionals in over 2,200 offices licensed in Oregon and Washington. 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